5 Internet Marketing Tips To Promote Your Online Brand
September 21st, 2009 | by BillEgan |Your company logo and tag line should be memorable and communicate something about your company and what it does. 
Your domain represents an excellent way to tell more about what you do. A key issue to decide is whether to have your company name in the URL or to use it to describe what you do. If you use a keyword in the URL it helps increase your authority with the search engines for that search phrase. Remember that your domain name will be the first thing that visitors see when searching for your company online.
Above all know your audience and try and address their perceptions – if they are young teenage consumers they will react differently to a brand than if they are business professionals in their thirties. Your brand can communicate an image such as “cool, bright and breezy” or “serious and professional”.
How Is Branding Off-Line Different From Branding Online?
One major difference between off-line and online branding is the time to create a brand. Reading from Seth Godin book, Unleashing the Idea Virus, he points out:
Up until the end of the 20th century, the amount of time it took to reach 50 million users/viewers was:
- Radio – 38 years
- TV 13 years
- Cable 10 years
- Internet 5
- Hotmail 1 year
The ability to influence more people more quickly is never more true. But just because you can reach more people, it does not mean you can influence more people.
5 Tips For Building Your Brand Online
1. Create a Listening Post
Consider using Google reader or Google alerts to monitor key websites and blogs to keep in touch with where you are being mentioned online.
2. Don’t Just Rely Solely On Your Website
Relying solely on your text only website is becoming less effective when it comes to spreading your companies message. Building your website should only be the start of your online marketing efforts and building your brand is definitely not going to happen if you just stick to your traditional website.
When trying to build your brand you should give your company every opportunity to get noticed. Using text is naturally one way, but how you deliver that text has become much more important. Having a website is only the starting point. You should be delivering your brand through:
- Blogs
- Video
- Images
- Online PR releases
- Link building strategies
3. Use RSS
RSS or Really Simple Syndication is an extremely effective method for people to get notified of changes to your website and blog. If one of your customers has a large number of websites that they want to keep up to date on, instead of checking the actual websites every few days, simply let them subscribe to your website using your RSS feed. This way, they get all your important new content delivered straight to them. This is possible using a piece of software called an ‘Aggregator’ or ‘Feed Reader’ Popular aggregator’s are:
4. Consider Social Media Marketing Strategies.
The social media websites below should play a key part in your online brand building strategy. As these websites are used by the larger search engines for content, you will get more visibility when you start to build a presence in these web 2.0 sites.
5. Keep Viral Marketing in Mind.
Viral marketing is an excellent strategy for spreading your message and building your brand through ‘word of mouse’. Perfecting a viral message is not an easy thing to do. A recent example of viral marketing was the Susan Boyle video of her performance on the “Britain’s Got Talent TV show”
The power of Viral Marketing lies with your audience. When they start spreading your message for you, without you having to advertise or push the message, bingo! The more effective the viral message, the more online visibility you get.
In Summary………
Building your brand online should be an ongoing exercise that continually looks for new ways to get your message out there. Increasingly online users are getting information sent to them rather than going searching for it.
Your ability to create a buzz has become increasingly more important, it only takes months now to reach 50 millions potential customers – the trick is knowing how to find them!
Related posts:
- How To Build Your Online Brand? 4 Tips for Success What Is A Brand And How Is It Represented?...
- How Can Online Talk Be Used to Measure Your Online Brand? How do you keep up to date on what...
- Strategic Internet Marketing Plan – Asking the Right Questions! Part 1 Do you outsource the development of your company's strategic internet...
- Is your Internet Marketing strategy following the SERPS? The definition of Internet Marketing is expanding all the time...
- Closing an Online Sale – 8 Tips on How to Minimise Friction? You will need to consider factors such as How...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
7 Responses to “5 Internet Marketing Tips To Promote Your Online Brand”
By Perry Anne Norton on Sep 22, 2009 | Reply
Hi Bill–
Thanks for an excellent blog post. I might add a suggestion relative to social media marketing (a huge topic itself). First, encourage the use of the SHARE button if you’re using Twitter, FB, et al; it encourages viral spread of your message to many arenas.
To that end, with all the Twitter white noise, set yourself apart by Tweeting via Chir.ps (audio posts) which you can record yourself, or have someone professionally record for you (full disclosure – I’m an audio producer and v/o talent) for as little as $75 and you can retweet (or chirp) your audio promo or blog post at any time.
Keep the great info coming!
PanRight Productions
By SEO Sheffield on Jan 3, 2010 | Reply
Great post, Bill. Trying to get through to customers the ‘Building your website should only be the start’ philosophy can be pretty tough. But I try to use some of theses points to express that to them… so thanks for backing me up. I agree with everything here.
Best,
Samantha Deakin
Dig the Web
By Jess Echavez on Jun 16, 2010 | Reply
Great post. Thanks for sharing these interesting tips. SEO has been one of the best and effective strategies in online marketing, companies as well as its clients have been successful with SEO.
By Lisa Dirker on Jul 27, 2010 | Reply
This strategy is very well thought out and presented very clearly. As I am rather new to this business, I am still learning and plan to continue learning. I will be referring back to this post and part 1 often, I’m sure. Thank you.
By Steve - Calgary Local Internet Marketing on Jul 29, 2010 | Reply
Google reader should be a MUST for anyone trying to stay on top of their field. Yes, you have to set it up properly, however, I find it invaluable. The social media component, yes, it’s part of the marketing program, however it should be towards the bottom of the list, not so much the top.
You can leverage the traffice from facebook and twitter to some degree but I’d rather use video (youtube) and tubemogl to really drive more traffic.
By Tess Gribben on Aug 8, 2010 | Reply
I’ve never really thought of Google Reader or Google Alerts before. Thanks for drawing my attention to it.
Tess
p.s. do you think radio is any good in todays ‘rush rush’ world?
By Peter Cullen on Aug 10, 2010 | Reply
@Tess, thanks for the comment. Yes I think radio has it’s place, depending on the product/service and the targeting. If for example you run an ad alongside a business show and your company offer business consulting services, then this could be a good match. The real difficulty with radio is measuring success.